This report is a review of a series of activities held in the Joint Decision Support and Simluaton Centre in November and December 2007. This report accompanies a classified report containing more details on the outcomes of the activities. The purpose of this report is to capture, in an unclassified way, some of the process lessons learned during these activities. While many of these lessons are not new it is hoped recording them in this way will help prevent mistakes being repeated in the future.

This report is an unclassified accompaniment to a classified report on the same topic. Together, they describe an event made up of a series of activities held at the Joint Decision Support and Simulation Centre (JDSSC) in Fairbairn, Canberra during November (Event 1) and December (Event 2) 2007. The activities were classified, but it is beneficial for the management of similar activities in the future if the unclassified methodological insights are presented in an accessible way. The event comprised a one day Defence-only 'rehearsal' activity, and a three day activity which included other Government agency participants. Both of these were preceded by several days of set up, and a day of practice runs for each activity. One further event (Event 3) was planned, but was subsequently indefinitely suspended following the change of government in November 2007. Most of the observations refer to Event 2, the December activity because it was the larger and longer of the two conducted. This report attempts to identify and learn from errors as well as acknowledging techniques that worked well. As such, it is not intended as an overall assessment of the event. Nor is the report a comprehensive review of techniques, rather it provides some pragmatic information on methodologies that worked and those that did not work in this context. The degree to which the event was a success can be determined from the goals and outcomes as set out in the joining instruction, this is assessed in the classified report. It is important to note that this event aimed to look at command and control structures associated with the system rather than the explicit details of the system itself. A wide variety of lessons are identified in four areas: planning, game play, data capture mechanisms and analytical tools, These lessons range from agreeing goals with clients and choosing scenarios that appropriately use the capabilities to room set up and having effective facilitation.